There’s been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from supporters of Kamala Harris…mostly on Twitter. The news that she suspended her campaign (which means she’s dropping out the race to be elected president) wasn’t surprising to me. When she announced she was running, I was thrilled. Even before she made her public announcement in Oakland, I sent her ten dollars. Not a lot, but it was all I could afford to give to a political campaign that just started. I thought with her no-nonsense approach to politics, her ability to pin people down (and sometimes dress them down) in her Senate committee work, her bona fides as San Francisco’s and California’s top cop, and a whole host of other qualities she exhibited, she would make a formidable opponent to Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.
I wasn’t alone in that assessment.
After the first Democratic debate where she took Joe Biden to task for supporting anti-busing efforts, I thought she clearly understood that when you run for president, it’s a blood sport. She was taking jabs at the apparent front-runner and hitting him hard on his appeal to black voters by highlighting that Obama’s former VP was really no friend to black folks in the 1970s — and she did so in a personal way. By highlighting that she was a kid who was bussed to another school in Berkeley, she was taking aim (in a political, but not entirely accurate way) of Biden’s stated opposition to busing kids as ordered by the Department of Education. Berkeley, at the time, had a voluntary busing program — something Biden never opposed. That didn’t matter in the debates, though. What mattered was Harris’s ability to distinguish herself from the pack by throwing pushes at the top dog — which is something Donald Trump did during the Republican debates with “Low Energy” Jeb and the rest. In short, she showed herself to be a fighter. That’s something that rank and file voters can get behind, and it showed in her spike in popularity and fundraising.
But as she surged in the polls and raked in cash, things started to slide downhill after the second and third debates. It didn’t help matters that Harris wasn’t able to articulate what her priorities were as a future president. The lack of an overarching vision hurt her in both her home state and in the rest of the country. Then there was the internal campaign struggles that plagued her staff. Poor organization, infighting, layoffs, bad internal communication, and the like tanked morale, made donors leery about investing in a rudderless ship, and the media just sort of yawned when her name was mentioned. Add that all up, and you get a video announcement like this:
It has been the honor of my life to be your candidate. We will keep up the fight. pic.twitter.com/RpZhx3PENl
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 3, 2019
So. That’s it, right? Nope. Harris is still a formidable politician, but she needs better people around her if she’s going to succeed in the future. As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out in an editorial, Harris is “studied, introspective and resilient.” She learns from her experiences (good and bad) and uses those lessons to recalibrate her political posture for future battles. It’s clear her other Democratic competitors see that (well, maybe except for Representative Tulsi Gabbard), and view her abilities as an asset for leadership positions in the future. She’s not a fading star, but one whose wings got clipped by a variety of factors first-time national candidates can sometimes be trapped by. Like I wrote earlier, she learns from her experiences — and she will learn a lot from this presidential run. The Chronicle also notes (and I agree) that Harris will most likely be asked either to be a Vice Presidential candidate (something early political watchers were thinking would work on as a Biden/Harris ticket) or, should a Democrat beat Trump in November 2020, be nominated at Attorney General.
So, to all the folk freaking out on Twitter saying “I’m done with all you progressives who beat up on Harris,” you really have to get over it and look at the bigger canvas. Kamala Harris will be fine. She won’t be president, but she may wield a lot of power as a Senator-Juror in an upcoming trial of the current occupant of the White House who may be impeached by the House of Representatives. Beyond that, the political future for Kamala Harris looks very good.
